Talk:The Other (Multiverse)
The Other I only briefly read about this, annoyingly It doesn't link to 'The Other' when i typed it in so i'm glad I found it! Zachariah Zuan 22:10, March 14, 2010 (UTC) Name Change Proposal I propose a name change to The Other (Multiverse), since "Ero" was nothing but a manifestation it created. Arawn 999 (talk) Great Weaver First appearance section says: (February, 2006) But The Other never said she and Great Weaver are the same thing.--Primestar3 (talk) 20:55, April 3, 2015 (UTC) : Yes, it kinda did. *sigh* This is why I hate retcons that leave unexplained plot holes. OK... here's everything I can find regarding story lines featuring the Spider-Totems. I've bolded the super-relevent parts: * Initially, it was stated Peter Parker got his spider-powers because the spider that bit him was radioactive, causing the enzymes in its venom to mutate his DNA and give him spider-powers. * J. Michael Straczynski introduced the concept of Spider-Totems in Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 30 and Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 32, when Ezekiel Sims tells Peter that their powers come from a "Web of Life" spun by a totemic spider-god called the Great Weaver - who has temples in Peru (seen in a flashback arc in Spider-Man Annual Vol 1 2001) and Ghana - and that the spider that gave Peter his powers would have done so radiation or no radiation because it was supernatural. Ezekiel reveals he's been monitoring a being called Morlun who eats totemic avatars and tries to get Peter to hide in a bunker. Peter refuses and is nearly killed, but poisons Morlun with radiation, enabling him to be killed. * After running across the Great Weaver in the Astral Plane (Amazing Spider-Man Vol 2 42), Peter is attacked by a totemic wasp deity called Shathra, who sensed his connection to the Great Weaver and wants to eat him. Peter lures her to the Great Weaver's temple in Ghana, and she's eaten by a swarm of spiders. After this, New York is attacked by a supernatural spider-entity called the Gatekeeper, who Ezekiel says monitors and controls mystical forces. The Gatekeeper tells Peter he was chosen to be the totemic avatar of Earth-616 because, having been bullied, he was the perfect predator; and that Ezekiel misappropriated and misused his powers and has therefore been judged unworthy of them. Peter then realizes that Morlun, Shathra, and the Gatekeeper weren't after him, but Ezekiel. Since the Gatekeeper will only let one of them live, Ezekiel takes Peter to the Great Weaver's temple and tries to sacrifice him to the Gatekeeper, but has a change of heart and sacrifices himself after realizing he only used his powers for selfish purposes while Peter was a hero. * In The Spectacular Spider-Man Vol 2 15 Peter runs across a woman named Adriana Soria, who claims to be a member of the Mutant genus "Homo insectus", and can control people with the "Insect Gene", which she says one third of people are born with. She kisses Peter and a mutagenic substance in her saliva slowly turns him into a giant spider under her control. He later moults out of the spider-body with augmented powers like enhanced strength and organic webbing. * In Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 526, Peter is mortally wounded by the resurrected Morlun. When Morlun injures Mary Jane while trying to finish him off, Peter partially-transforms into Man-Spider and kills Morlun before dying. In Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 527 he is confronted by a Spider-Totem who tells him that his human side died and if he wants to return to life he has to embrace his inner spider. Peter does so and is resurrected with enhanced powers. This arc was called The Other after the Great Weaver's question to Peter: "Are you the man who dreamed of being a spider? Or the spider who dreamed of being a man? Are you the one... or are you the Other?" * In Marvel Knights: Spider-Man Vol 1 22, Ero, an antagonistic Spider-Totem nigh-identical to the Gatekeeper in appearance, manifests using Peter's shed skin, states that the Great Weaver had violated the natural order by resurrecting Peter , and that she intends to fix things by killing him. Ero later takes on human form - with powers similar to the ones Peter got from the Great Weaver - as "Miss Arrow", tries to impregnate Flash Thompson Xenomorph-style, and is killed by Peter. * The topics of spider-totems and the Web of Life was prominently featured and expanded upon in Araña's series (Amazing Fantasy Vol 2 4, Amazing Fantasy Vol 2 5, Amazing Fantasy Vol 2 6, Araña: The Heart of the Spider Vol 1, Spider-Man & Araña Special: The Hunter Revealed Vol 1 1) - where it's revealed Ezekiel wasn't such a bad guy after all: He founded WebCorps to serve as a front for the Spider-Totem worshipping Spider Society and served as their Hunter prior to his death. It's later revealed that Anya wasn't meant to be the Spider Society's Hunter and she relinquishes the powers she got from them. * Post-One More Day, Peter no longer has the powers he got from either the Queen or the Great Weaver, which the writers said weren't forgotten and would be explained later. * In Spider-Island, Adriana Soria returns allied with the Jackal. They infect New York with a virus made from Adriana's mutagenic enzyme, which gives almost everyone in New York City spider-powers before turning them into giant spiders. Madame Webb reveals that in doing so, Adriana is overloading the Web of Life and amplifying her own connection to it to become a god. Adriana is killed by Kaine - who was resurrected as a Man-Spider-like monster before being reverted to human form by a cure made from the Anti-Venom symbiote, but with powers identical to the ones Peter received after his first encounter with Adriana. Anya Corazon also receives spider-powers identical to the ones Peter got from the Queen, and more importantly kept them even after being dosed with the Anti-Venom cure. * In Scarlet Spider Vol 2 14, Kaine is killed by the Lobos siblings, and his body is coccooned by a swarm of spiders. Ero appears in mindscape, introduces herself as "the Other" and reveals that she was the Spider-Totem who resurrected Peter in Amazing Spider-Man Vol 1 527 - leaving a plot hole as how she could manifest separately of Peter and why she would then try to kill him and impregnate Flash. She offers Kaine the power to return to life and survive what's coming next if he embraces his Inner Spider, and he accepts in order to protect Aracely. The original event is referenced when Ero sneers that Peter was merely a man who dreamed of being a spider while Kaine is a spider who dreamed of being a man, and Kaine answers the Spider-Totem's question to Peter: "My name is Kaine. Not man, but Spider. Not one... But the Other." He then sporadically transforms into a Man-Spider-like monster whenever he gets really angry. * In Amazing Spider-Man Vol 3 1 it's revealed that the Spider which bit Peter bit a second person, Cindy Moon, before it died, turning her into a special Spider-Totem - as well as completely ignoring that the mutant spider played a role in empowering the Thousand - and that Ezekiel had been working for most of his life to keep the next generation of Spider-Totems safe from the likes of Morlun. * In Spider-Verse, Dan Slott introduces the "Master Weaver", a seemingly god-like entity who spins the "Web of Life and Destiny" and who has been enslaved by Morlun's family, the Inheritors. The Inheritors are using the Web of Life to traverse the Multiverse and kill off all the Spider-Totems' avatars (essentially anyone and everyone with spider-powers, no matter how they acquired them) to prevent a prophecy that states the Spider-Totems will overthrow them in 1000 years. To destroy the Web of Life, they need the blood of the Other, and two other "Great Totems": "the Bride", and "the Scion". The Inheritors spill the Other's and Bride's blood on the Web of Life - severing the former's connection to it and preventing it from ever taking another host, and preventing new Spider-Totems from arising through chance or magic. Otto Octavius kills the Master Weaver and shreds the Web of Life, destabilizing the Multiverse. : Anya Corazon, who can read the language of the Spider-Totems due to having gotten her powers from the Spider-Society - completely ignoring that she lost her the powers she got from the Spider-Society and had gotten a completely different set of spider-powers from the Queen's Spider-Flu - reads the inscription on Morlun's dagger that there must always be a Master Weaver. Cindy - the avatar of the Bride - decides to atone for getting so many totemic avatars injured and killed by taking the Master Weaver's place. Anya then reads that while any Spider-Totem can take the Master Weaver's place weaving the Great Web, only death can free them from that duty. After it's revealed the Master Weaver is Karn's future self, the younger Karn traps himself in an eternal time loop to atone for his sins and sets about repairing the Web. No mention is made of the Great Weaver or Gatekeeper during the event. : TLDR version: It was initially stated the Great Weaver was a spider-god who gave Peter his powers and then resurrected him with enhanced powers, and Ero was a separate antagonistic character who was eventually killed off. So far as I can tell, Christopher Yost retconned this so that Ero was the one who resurrected Peter and renamed her "The Other" - creating some massive plot holes in the process - and Dan Slott repackaged the remaining aspects of JMS' Great Weaver into the "Master Weaver", creating even more plot holes. Arawn 999 (talk) 22:10, April 3, 2015 (UTC) :: I think there's no way Master Weaver and Great Weaver aren't same characters if there's only one Web of Life. But maybe Great Weaver/Master Weaver ordered The Other to resurrect him, which is why Ero said Great Weaver is the one who resurrected Peter. Anyway, I think Great Weaver and Master Weaver's page should be merged.--Primestar3 (talk) 11:06, April 4, 2015 (UTC) ::: That's the problem with trying to retroactively apply retcons, especially ones that split a single character into two separate ones or vice versa. It doesn't always work and more-often-than-not leaves gaping holes in the plot that no amount of fanon or head-canon can fill. Even if we were to go with your explanation, that doesn't explain why Ero/The Other would repeatedly try to kill Peter afterwards if it was the one who resurrected him, nor does it explain why she tried to reproduce Alien-style with Flash. Furthermore, it's established that the Master Weaver isn't the only one spinning that Web: the Bride weaves in hidden threads, and it's possible other Spider-Totems that weren't mentioned in Spider-Verse are involved too. In JMS' run the Great Weaver was stated to be a totemic god, which Karn isn't, and shares just as many - if not more - similarities with the Other than it does with the Master Weaver. In fact, Ero actually had more similarities with the Gatekeeper prior to Scarlet Spider's retcons than she did the Great Weaver. My point is, nothing official and definitive has been put forth, so until an editor comes out and says they're one-and-the-same and addresses the requisite plot holes, I vote we leave them separate. That's been the wiki's stance with the retconned universes in Spider-Verse, and plot holes as a result of old and new canon conflicting with one another (like the above example) have resulted in a sizeable debate over whether or not to split the Spider-Man 2099 page. Arawn 999 (talk) 11:43, April 4, 2015 (UTC)